Friday Night Live Gets Expanded “Beer Garden”

The Belmont City Council last night approved the request from the Downtown Merchants Association to expand the “beer garden” for Friday Night Live. The new area extends from the Caravan parking lot and Airline Avenue to include all of the street and sidewalk in front of Stowe Park.

As a result, the merchants association also approved a new cup size that will be available on July 11:

Friday Night Live organizer and Belmont Man About Town(BMAT), Vince Hill, explained to council that the real purpose of Friday Night Live is to provide five $500 scholarships for South Point HS students. After all the expenses of each event, the group clears about $200. The merchants association also sells t-shirts and accepts donations as a 501(c)3 organization.

Council members engaged Mr. Hill with ideas to help make more money. Former police chief Flowers suggested using a gambling scheme commonly known as a 50/50 to help. Mr. Hill countered with a request to have the city police donate their time to reduce the $375/event cost. Ron Foulk suggested that Mr. Hill and Chief David James, “get together and work out a plan”. After it was all said and done, the beer garden gets expanded to Mill Street and the sidewalk fronting Stowe Park. The merchants also decided later to increase the cup size – as noted in the photo above.

While this is all well and good – certainly should increase the crowd size and lower the age demographic for attendance – the police will have much more to patrol. We hope the discussion in the “work things out” plan notices that once on the sidewalk, the city ordinance against alcohol in the park will be severely tested. Even though no police-related incidents have occurred through eight previous Friday Night Live events, the group is inviting something to happen.

Funny how an event planned outside of government supervision now needs/wants taxpayer money to make money – for scholarships no less. City Council is quite proud that they could help – already covering the overtime for the public works personnel who provide cleanup after the event, and providing 5 off-duty policeman ($25/hr paid to the officers).

After all the brouhaha of last summer when the project was first proposed – “state road, can’t have alcohol in the street” and “program to increase downtown awareness and traffic outside of government sponsorship”, we now have a fun product offered by merchants who aren’t seeing the (rubbing fingers together motion) the dollar for dollar return.

How sad.

It’s a great event series. We hope it doesn’t get out of hand and hope that the purposes are clearly defined. Charlie Flowers even has a line item for the newly created Belmont Tourism Authority, $3000 allocation to the downtown merchants – talk about tax and spend.

Belmont Concerts in the Park

The first of four concerts in the park was held this past Saturday evening, with the Center City Groove band, entertaining a relatively sparse crowd based on past history.

The Center City Groove is a 5 piece cover band, doing music from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Of course, the obligatory “Electric Slide” too.

The band did an OK job, nothing really special – have we become “concerted-out” here in Belmont, or is it all becoming too generic?

The lead singer, ‘Hollywood’, had his mic turned up to the point of distortion. They needed a sound tech or at least someone helping to adjust the loudness. He was a good singer, a bit full of himself, but aren’t all entertainers?

The lead guitar was excellent, his bluesy style and the few solos went over well with the crowd on the hill.

Even with the heat, it seemed to cool off quite a bit when the sun slipped below the treeline. The new program staffer, “Reba” from the Parks and Recreation Department plugged the new concession stand and the ice cream. Must have worked because a lot of people were seen with cones and slushies all evening.

The next concert in the park is next Saturday evening at 7:00 PM. Hopefully, it won’t be quite as hot. The Charlotte Civic Orchestra will be the entertainment.

Discovery Place eyeing Belmont for children’s museum

Even though the concept is old news ’round here, when the Gazette picks it up, it must be important.

We think this is a great reuse of the inactive mills, it helps from a destination place viewpoint, and it keeps the Discovery Place program in the forefront of children’s programming.

Our wholehearted endorsement of this program is just a few small voices applauding the formation and planning process.

With homes in the former Chronicle Mill village converted to private ownership, and the lack of significant parking, what are the plans to move cars, and the many school busses and day care busses through the neighborhood?

This will certainly be a challenge to Mayor Richard Boyce’s vision of “Neighborhood Preservation’ as expressed in the recently passed Comprehensive Land Use Plan.

We would assume the RL Stowe Fiber Lab will be eliminated for the parking needs, but that begs the question about the Belmont Parks and Rec department onetime eye on the land next to the new police station. Members of council had shared an interest several years ago in this land for a Recreation Center when the police station was under construction. Now that the Parks Bond has passed, maybe they have backed off on that idea?

The program of regionalizing the Discovery Place for children in the lower elementary grades is a workable concept. Already in the design phase, a similar regional Discovery Place Kids will be located in Huntersville. As many as five regional prgrams could be established. Kinda wonder what would happen to the Schiele Museum over in Gastonia. The city’s museum is struggling financially and the current city manager has put pressure on all the department heads to lower city-funded operating losses.

Could Discovery Place Kids be the Wal-mart of children’s museum programming?

Good Luck with this project, we hope it works out for the best for everyone.